


Oblivious George

by arifs_shopgirl



Category: Lockwood & Co. - Jonathan Stroud
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Engaged lockyle, Engagement, English teachers hate me, Established Relationship, F/M, Future Fic, I can’t use commas for shit, Minor Flo Bones/George Cubbins, but the skull’s still in a jar, fire extinguisher, i mean it’s there but not enough for me to tag it as a relationship, idk the timeline, post TEG, pure fluff, skull goofing off, working a case
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 11:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16240595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arifs_shopgirl/pseuds/arifs_shopgirl
Summary: A one-shot for Lockwood and Co, focusing on Lockyle.  I tried for some humor but idk if it came through.  Basically just a typical day at Lockwood and Co and KIPPS PUT DOWN THE FIRE EXTINGUISHER.*now with a new and improved ending, a new character, and beta'd (by myself, I was bored)*





	Oblivious George

**Author's Note:**

> *I do not own these characters, they are Jonathon Stroud's.*  
> Sorry if this sucks, its my first time writing anything I felt like posting. I know the title’s weird, it’s supposed to be a spin off of Curious George.

The first time I noticed the new weight on my hand, it was when we were fighting a particularly humorous shifter. This Visitor, whether consciously or not, was taking the shape of three animals at once. Currently, it had the head of a lion, the belly of a hippo, and the legs of a kangaroo.

 _“Liohipparoo!_ ” A disembodied voice came from my rucksack.

That would be the skull. As opposed to giving advice, as was requested by both Lockwood and myself on multiple occasions, it instead opted to provide a great number of sarcastic comments and ridiculous names for the creatures the shifter changed into.

After throwing an annoyed glance in its general direction, I returned my attention to the ghost and the nuisance on my finger. The item in question was a large silver ring with a square emerald in the center, surrounded by writing that had long since worn away as to now be illegible. Lockwood had said his parents brought it home after their trip to Peru, and estimated it to be over 200 years old. He had given it to me the night before, having finally asked for my hand after two months of dating (or an agent’s equivalent of it). This was my first case as his fiancé, and the ring made my grip looser and kept digging into my finger, and was heavy enough that, after nearly an hour of playing cat and mouse with a Visitor, my blade was slowing and my arm was beginning to lower.

My train of thought was broken by a shrill cry of “ _MERMACOW!_ ”

Indeed, the Visitor now had the body of a mermaid and the head of a cow. Lockwood ducked a spout of ectoplasm and continued twirling his rapier, keeping the Visitor penned in. I jumped in to help him, slicing at the bits of ectoplasm that were trying to escape.

“Lucy, look out!”

As a last attempt the shifter had swung its tail around, but both Lockwood and I dodged it easily. It was obvious it was loosing strength, but we had seen it do this before. On each occasion the ghost had disappeared into a different wall, which gave us no clue as to the location of the source. This time it went past us into the kitchen and slipped through the cupboards.

Lockwood sighed. For the fourth time that night, we dug out our crowbars. Mrs. Poward wasn’t going to like us very much when she returned the following morning. There were already piles of paneling and wood chips in half the rooms in the house (not that it was a very large house, but still).

We began hacking at the newest wall, with encouragement provided by the skull, which I had placed on the table out of harms way.

“ _Put your back into it, woman! I can hit harder than that and I don’t even have hands._ "

“ _Ooh hit it again there! I almost saw the board jiggle a little bit._ ”

“ _Tell Lockwood to shift a bit to his right, I want to have a clear view when he falls on his behind._ ”

Unfortunately, this was the norm for me. Sweaty excursions at odd hours of the night with a skull jabbering in my ear.

Finally, Lockwood called for me to stop. We had been at it for ten minutes, and had found no source, no clue as to its whereabouts, nothing to help us contain the Visitor. All I had gotten was a more persistent throbbing in my finger.

“ _Aren’t you going to ask me for help?_ ”

“We have. You've been useless.”

Lockwood glanced at me. I gestured distractedly at the silver glass jar sitting on the kitchen table.

“ _Well you haven’t asked nicely,_ ” the ghost in question replied. “ _If you had I might have answered._ ”

“Fine. Could you _please_ give us any insight to the nature of the ghost, location of its Source, or any other useful information?”

“ _No._ “

I groaned in frustration and lobbed a sliver of wood at it. It bounced off the jar with a very unsatisfying noise.

“ _I_ can _tell you that there is a secret room behind that wall._ "

“That would be considered useful information!”

We didn’t know much about the history of the house, or the ghost because George was out for most of the day, as was becoming increasingly common. No one knew what he was doing, but our suspicions were that he spent more time with Flo than recommend if you wanted to remain healthy, as he often returned to Portland Row caked in river mud and reeking like, well, Flo. Whatever the reason, he seemed to spend more time away from the house than he did in it, and as a result we were going into this case blind, so all we had to go on was the news that there was a secret room, and that was delivered by a talking skull, but it was enough for me.

"The skull says that there's a secret room!" I told Lockwood, who wasn't able to hear its half of our exchange, as I began poking at the wall, hoping to find a board with a pressure release.

Lockwood quickly joined me, starting at the other end of the wall. We worked our way in towards each other until our hands were on the same panel.

"On three." Lockwood said, grinning at me. "One, two... three!"

We pushed, and I felt something click, and a moment later a door that had been invisible a moment before creaked open.

I stole a glance at Lockwood, who was already examining the passageway, checking for traps. I went back and picked up the skull, placing it back in my rucksack before pushing past Lockwood, trailing my hand on the stone wall as I passed, hoping for my Touch to give me a glimpse of the past. I got nothing until I rounded the corner and found myself in a small, square room. The psychic residue was strong, and I was thrown into a vision of the past so hard that I backed into Lockwood, who was coming up behind me, and only got a glimpse of a woman standing by the desk in the corner before my hand left the wall. I tentatively replaced it, and was again struck by the vision's strength, but this time Lockwood was there to support me, and I didn't flinch. I saw the same woman I had seen before, but this time I was closer. She was holding a large wooden box engraved with carvings of humans along with what looked like hieroglyphs. She was standing by the same desk, and as I watched put the box in a drawer.

When the scene began to repeat I wrenched myself out of the memory to find Lockwood on the other side of the room, leaning impatiently against the wall. That was the problem with Touch, you couldn't control it. You were just standing there in a trance while everything happened around you. When Lockwood saw that I was back, he raised his eyebrows questioningly.

"The desk," I said, "Some sort of Egyptian box."

He calmly pushed himself off the wall and strode over to the desk, pulling open the drawer. It was at that moment the shifter decided to reappear.

Lockwood felt the psychic disturbance and left the desk, instead taking up guard duty while I located the Source. We had done this so many times since we started working together that we didn't even have to speak. I just walked over to the desk and stuck my hand in the drawer. I moved it from side to side, ring scraping on the wood, until I felt the stickiness I had grown so accustomed to, the one that meant I had found the Source. Tugging out the box I had seen, now wrapped in layers of spider webs, I turned around to check on Lockwood. He was holding his own, darting in and out, faking to the right then thrusting up into the head of a dolphin. This form resulted in very high pitched clicking noises echoing around in my head, so I decided to wrap this up.

Pulling a silver chain net from one of my pockets, I draped it over the box, causing the ghost Lockwood was fighting to flicker then disappear completely.

Lockwood pulled me in for a celebratory kiss before pulling me out, back into the kitchen. I was glad for this, because I think we were both getting a bit claustrophobic.

“Nice work in there, Luce."

"Thanks. Think George would like this one?"

"Oh, he would have a field day. You know how much he likes shifters, always trying to figure out what lets them change shape."

"Good," I said with a yawn, "didn't really want to take a trip to the furnaces."

"Let's give it to him in the morning, we need a good night's sleep."

We exited the house, locked it, and hailed a Night Cab. I fell asleep on the ride, and have a hazy memory of Lockwood carrying me up to his bedroom.

...

When I awoke the next morning, Lockwood was already up and downstairs reading on the couch in the library. He glanced up when I walked in, and flashed me a smile, the one he reserved just for me.

"Morning, Luce. Sleep well?"

"Very well. Did you give George his gift yet?" I asked.

"I thought you might want to do the honors." he responded, holding up the silver chain net containing the Source from last night's case.

"You thought right." I said, taking the bundle from him. "Is he back yet?"

"Yeah, he's in the kitchen."

I turned around and made my way over to where George was writing something on the thinking cloth.

I held my hand holding the Source out to George, and was about to tell him about the shifter from last night, but was cut off by a very high-pitched squeal.

Holly came running in from where she was dusting the skull lamp in the front hall.

"What is it? What's wrong? Is someone dying? Is there a fire?"

Kipps, upon hearing the word 'fire', came running through spraying a fire extinguisher and screaming something nonsensical (we know not to joke about fire when he's around, apparently Inspector Barnes told him about the client's house I set fire to, and he now lives his life in fear that we will do it again (again)).

George's mouth was moving, but no words were coming out, and Holly had already started cleaning up the foam made by Kipps' fire extinguisher, before rushing out of the room to stop him from doing any more damage. Lockwood still remained in the library, even though the house was falling into chaos. But _why_ was the house falling into chaos?

My question was answered when George finally found his voice.

"Lucy, what is that on your finger???"

"LOCKWOOD, HOLLY, GET IN HERE LUCY'S GOT A RING"

“Why didn’t you tell us you were dating, Luce?"

It was at this moment Lockwood finally appeared, with a bemused smile on his face. Holly came rushing in after, grabbed my hand (still holding the very heavy source), examined the ring, then glanced at Lockwood.

"So you finally got around to asking her?" she asked him.

He just nodded in response, because George had resumed his rambling, making talking impossible. When George finally calmed down, he asked, "So, who's the lucky guy?"

I just nodded at Lockwood. George still looked confused, so Lockwood strode across the room, cupped my face, and kissed me. It would have been one of the best, but it was cut short by a loud crash.

“Cubbins, what are you doing on the ground” Kipps asked, finally having put down the fire extinguisher.

That got our attention, and we turned around just in time to see George laying on the tile next to the counter, with a concerned Holly kneeling over him.  Kipps was leaning against the doorframe, but spun around and ran out, only to return a second later, holding a sharpie, can of whipped cream, and a Polaroid camera (pink, so it was probably Holly’s, he didn’t seem to care though).

At that moment, Flo kicked in the back door, screaming something about defending her man’s honor.  Now, Flo is scary enough normally, but Flo advancing  spinning a rapier covered in river mud is a force to be reackoned with, so Lockwood, Holly and I wisely retreated to the hall; Lockwood complaining about the mud stains on the wallpaper and having to replace the door.  Kipps kept dancing around the kitchen, trying to get past Flo to George’s unconscious body.

We later learned three things; one, the box we found contained a canonic jar containing the organs of a dead guy, two, that Kipps has blackmail files on all of us, and three, that George is very bad at dealing with emotions.

**Author's Note:**

> AHHHHH ok so this kind of got out of control at the end (I blame it on my lack of sleep), but I finished it way sooner than I thought I would because I was trying to find a reason to not do homework. Hope you liked it :)  
> Note: I might start a series about Kipps adding to his blackmail collection or make a fic about the wedding!


End file.
